


just something I can turn to

by jdphoenix



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Episode: s01e17 Turn Turn Turn, F/M, Hydra Leo Fitz, Minor Skye | Daisy Johnson/Grant Ward
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-14
Updated: 2017-09-14
Packaged: 2018-12-27 20:09:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12088467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdphoenix/pseuds/jdphoenix
Summary: “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? To suffer for your love?”





	just something I can turn to

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for a first sentence prompt over on tumblr and it ... kind of got out of hand.

“We are never so defenseless against suffering as when we love,” Fitz muses. But it’s wrong. It’s all wrong. The smile on his face is cold, the words themselves are twisted and cruel, and the gun in his hand … it’s not an ICER. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? To suffer for your love?”

He lifts his eyes from Trip—on his knees thanks to successive blows from Ward—to Jemma. If Garrett weren’t holding her she would cringe back from the expression he wears. Fitz has always been a little short, a little prone to anger, but she’s never seen him like this before. She has the absurd urge to ask if he’s touched the berserker staff recently. (Which reminds her that the staff is safely locked away in the Fridge. Which in turn reminds her that it really might not be any longer, considering how things are going at the Hub.)

She swallows down the scream that caught in her throat when Trip fell and says, “Fitz.” It’s a plea really. For Trip’s life, perhaps? That it not be true that _Fitz_ is Hydra when he admitted as much himself before ordering Trip beaten? She doesn’t know what she wants, but it certainly isn’t this.

“I don’t know why,” Fitz says, eyes raking over her critically in a way that leaves her feeling completely exposed. “She’s not even that attractive.”

Absurdly, she has the urge to make a note of denial, but this is no time to give in to personal pride. Besides, Trip is chuckling through his split lip.

“Yeah, that’s why you’re always ducking in here to play lab partners instead of shacking up with the ice queen.”

Jemma hears the slap before she sees Fitz’s hand move to backhand Trip.

Trip just keeps on laughing. “Yeah, man, you sure proved me wrong there.”

Fitz’s still lifted hand shakes. He closes it into a fist and carefully lowers it to his side, each staccato movement purposeful and controlled. It should be a surprise, seeing him struggle so openly with violence, but it’s not. She feels almost as though this is Fitz’s true self finally shining through. In a strange way it’s a relief.

“I see what you’re doing,” he says, adjusting the front of his sweater. “You’re hoping I’ll make this quick. Let you die the hero.” He drops to a crouch and speaks softly. “You’ll be _pleading_ for death before I’m done with you.”

“Fitz-” Jemma says, her words and motion stalled by Garrett’s firm grip on her. She makes a brief attempt at shaking him off (really, they are in a _cell_ in a base overrun by Hydra, where is she going to go?) before saying, “Please, whatever you’re thinking … you don’t have to hurt him. Trip’s willing to- to go along.” She has to force the words out through a bitter taste at the back of her throat.

That’s how they got put in here. Agent Hand demanded they swear loyalty to Hydra and Trip was so concerned with keeping his promise to protect her that he agreed. It turned out to have been a test however, and they were imprisoned here until things could be sorted out. That the tide has turned and the Hub fallen to Hydra in truth surely won’t change Trip’s attitude.

Fitz smiles at her again. “Sad, isn’t it?” he asks, but she’s fairly certain the words are meant for Trip and not her. “One of the brightest minds on the planet and she doesn’t even see what’s happening. I could have every prisoner in this base brought in here and shot right in front of her and she’d plead for every single life like it mattered.” He shakes his head dismissively and stands to round Trip. Only another blow from Ward keeps Trip from grabbing him.

Jemma is so busy gaping at him that she doesn’t think to flinch back until he’s drawing his fingers along her cheek.

“You’re insane,” she says. And that too makes sense somehow. How has she never seen it before? That the man working right alongside her was a complete nutter?

He grabs her jaw tight enough to bruise. “ _Sadistic_ ,” he says, his voice belying his grip. “That was your favorite word for me if I recall.”

Yes, he is most definitely insane.

She finds herself looking to Ward. The Ward she knew yesterday wouldn’t have allowed her to be threatened. But then the Fitz she knew yesterday wouldn’t have threatened her. Just as this Fitz is, horrifyingly, so well-respected within Hydra that he can order men of Ward and Garrett’s skills to “do what they do best” and act as nothing more than silent muscle, this Ward is willing to follow those orders without a hint of resentment.

Fitz gives her a shake. “ _Say it_ ,” he demands.

“Y- you’re sadistic,” she says, with none of the venom she imagines he wants. But it satisfies him all the same. He drops his hold on her to wander back around Trip.

“You even compromised your cover for her,” he says as though he’d never stopped speaking to Trip at all, “spent _weeks_ in a reeducation center, holding onto your sanity. And it was all a waste. Because now she’s _mine_ , body and soul. How does that kind of defeat feel, I wonder?”

“A lot like a bullet to the knee, I’d imagine,” Ward says.

Fitz’s brow wrinkles in confusion. “Wha-” is all he manages before Ward fires, sending—as he said—a bullet through Fitz’s knee. Another follows, warming the air beside Jemma’s cheek and sending her staggering when Garrett falls to the floor, dead.

“About time you showed up,” Trip says. He’s at her side in what feels to her like a heartbeat but which she acknowledges must be much longer as she’s leaning against the wall a full four feet from where she was previously standing. “You okay?” he asks.

“Fitz is Hydra,” she says because there doesn’t seem to be any other answer. Trip’s mouth thins in a pitying frown but whatever he’s about to say is cut off by Ward.

“Wait, did you tell her?”

Trip shakes his head. He’s still holding her steady, his hands running up and down her arms in even strokes that help cut through her shock. “It’s the uprising, man.”

Ward pulls a very un-Ward-like face. “Kinda late, isn’t it?”

Trip shrugs. “I’m guessing that’s what those glitches we heard about are. Can’t deny reality.”

“Well that’s what they get for building this place using a book made of pure evil.”

“You know that’s right.”

Jemma has no more idea what they’re talking about—or even what Ward is _doing_ , wasn’t he just hailing Hydra not ten minutes ago—than she did the things Fitz was saying.

Fitz is clutching his leg, making infrequent whimpers of pain, but now he arches his neck to snarl at Ward. “Traitor.”

Coming from Fitz, who so recently proclaimed his betrayal of SHIELD, Jemma feels the accusation loses some of its bite. Ward seems to agree.

“You tortured my girlfriend,” he says dryly. “What’d you think I was gonna do?”

“Girlfriend?” Jemma echoes. It’s not the most pressing of the absurd statements made in the last few minutes, but if the world is going mad, Jemma might as well follow suit.

Trip smiles at her, so broad and warm it chases away the last of the chill that settled over her when Fitz sauntered in. “Yeah,” he says, brushing her hair over her ear in an intimate move that doesn’t seem at all out of place for all she’s only known him a short time. “I know it doesn’t seem possible-”

“Hey!” Ward’s annoyance is more friendly than truly affronted, more friendly than she’s ever heard him in fact.

“-but he’s not completely socially incompetent.” He twists around, taking Jemma’s hand as he does so. He did the same in the nerve center earlier while facing down Hand and her men. And just like then, she’s reminded of their conversation outside the med-pod so many weeks ago, of his musing that someone could come into your life and immediately be so important, so essential, that to live without them is unthinkable.

Fitz cries out when Ward kicks his hand, sending a knife skidding across the cell.

Jemma looks from them to Trip’s hand joined with hers; it feels right.

“So,” Trip asks. “I’m hoping you’re here because there’s good news.”

Ward grins. “Check your pockets.”

Trip does so and pulls out a small box with a single button inlaid on it. “Don’t take this the wrong way, man, but I love your girlfriend.”

Ward chuckles.

“What is that?” Jemma asks. The design seems familiar, but she can’t place it.

Trip’s hand leaves hers to cup her jaw. His touch, though insistent, is gentle against the bruising stiffness Fitz’s left in her skin. “This is our way out of here. Away from Hydra.”

“He’s lying!” Fitz gasps. “Simmons! Listen to me-”

Ward steps on his ruined knee, evoking a hollow gasp. “I think we’ve heard enough from you.”

“They don’t work for Hydra _or_ SHIELD!” Fitz yells, voice tight with pain. “If you go with them there’s no telling what they’ll do to you. At least with me you’ll be safe.”

Her immediate instinct is to laugh. Fitz? Keep her safe?

That gives her pause. Even after all that’s happened today, Fitz has been her friend for years, her constant companion. Surely it should take longer to turn her heart so completely against him.

“Jem?” Trip asks. That too feels right. Like his hand slipping into hers. Like taking a knife and knowing he won’t turn it on her. “Do you trust me?” he asks softly, like he’s read her mind.

She ignores Fitz’s protests and Ward’s threats. She looks into Trip’s eyes and thinks what she did the first time, all those weeks ago when he introduced himself in the med-pod: there’s no use guarding her heart when he’s already gone and stolen it.

“Yes,” she says just as quietly. There can be no other answer.

Trip’s fingers tighten around hers. “Ward?”

“I’ll be along in a minute,” Ward says. “I’ve got some loose ends to tie up here.”

That dark tone is the most like himself he’s sounded since shooting Fitz.

Either Trip doesn’t notice or he isn’t bothered by the promise of violence. “Close your eyes,” he says. She does and a moment later feels his forehead against hers. The box’s edges are sharp against her palm when he takes her free hand in his. She still doesn’t know what it’s meant to do, but she trusts Trip; it must be safe. “Deep breath. There’s no place like home.”

 

 

“She’s fine,” a voice says from above her. She’s on her back, lying on something hard and stiff. A table, most likely. She opens her eyes, only to immediately gasp in a sharp breath. The man hovering above her has no eyes, not even eye _sockets_. His chin lifts, his sightless gaze moving beyond her. “So is he.”

There’s a tug on her hand. The owner of the fingers tangled with hers is shifting. She turns and every ounce of fear washes out of her.

“Antoine,” she breathes.

He brings her hand to his lips so he can kiss her knuckles. Gordon moves behind them, gently removing the immersion devices from their heads.

She doesn’t have to ask how they rescued her while she was still hooked into the Framework and makes a mental note to ask Mace for an increase to her sugar ration so that she can bake Gordon’s favorite blondies. It would have been a huge risk for him to go into the heart of Hydra just for her and she’ll never be able to thank him enough.

It’s a struggle to sit up—she’s far weaker than she was only moments ago—but she manages with a little supporting tension from Antoine.

“Ward?” she asks. But now she sees him sitting up on Antoine’s far side, helped by Skye. “You shouldn’t have come,” she says to Antoine.

“We were never gonna leave you in there,” he says and underneath his pleased smile is a ferocity that surprises her.

“I mean you shouldn’t have come _in_.” At least it appears Ward only came in to pull them both out, but Antoine was clearly with her much longer. “How long were you there?”

He shrugs one shoulder, eyes on his fingers playing with hers rather than her face. “Not long. A day at most.”

Skye—the Skye of Hydra’s virtual prison—was shot _weeks_ ago. “So it was your avatar who said all that about people taking you by surprise?”

He winces.

Over his shoulder, Ward catches her eye. “He’s been dropping in and out ever since I told him they’d plugged you in.”

“ _Thanks_ , man,” Antoine snaps.

“You know why,” Ward says, then slides off the table. “He does,” he says, wrapping his arm around Skye’s shoulders while the two of them wander out. “He said I couldn’t get a girlfriend.”

“Poor baby,” Skye says.

Gordon’s already disappeared—by _walking_ out—and that just leaves the two of them.

“That was dumb,” Jemma says.

Antoine’s shoulders rise as he takes a deep breath. “You were alone in there. With _him_.”

“And I was safe.”

He scoffs, but that’s all the more reason for her to barrel on.

“You know I was. The doctor may hate the very ground I walk on but he’s no fool. He had me put in the Framework so that he could use my intellect.” The lie that SHIELD never fell keeps those prisoners Hydra values for their brains working diligently without duress. They’re happy in the Framework, content that the projects set before them are for the greater good of mankind. They have no idea that their breakthroughs are being carefully monitored by the enemy. “Hurting me would have defeated the purpose.”

Antoine wraps his hands around hers. “There are other ways to hurt you.”

She pulls him close to kiss him. She means it to be a chaste peck, but it’s been _months_ and the kiss quickly grows heated. It’s only seconds, however, before she’s breaking it to gasp for air.

“I’m afraid my stamina’s not what it used to be,” she says.

His hand slides into her hair. “We’ll have to work on that then, won’t we? After some lunch?”

As if on cue, her stomach rumbles. She doubts Hydra was concerned with her dietary health while she was in their care. “Yes, please.”

She lets him help her off the table and out of the room. Soon she’ll have to make a report to Mace regarding all the projects she worked on while in the Framework and then there will be the day-to-day work of the resistance to return to, but for now there’s Antoine, his warmth at her side and his hand in hers. Nothing has ever felt more right.

 


End file.
